Priest Killed at Altar of Philippines Church

June 13, 2018

Christians across the Philippines are outraged after the latest murder of a Roman Catholic priest in the country. A top archbishop maintained that those who murder priests are going to an “even worse” place than Hell.

“God’s justice be upon those who kill the Lord’s anointed ones. There is a special place in Hell for killers. There is a worse place for those who kill priests,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan declared on Tuesday.

The Associated Press reported that the priest, the Rev. Richmond Nilo, was gunned down Sunday night in the chapel in Zaragoza town in Nueva Ecija province, at the altar where he was preparing to celebrate Mass.

Two unidentified gunmen fired through the chapel window, before fleeing by motorcycle.

According to Philstar.com, the priest died from gunshots to the head and different parts of the body. Police found seven slugs from a caliber .45 pistol at the altar.

Nilo is the third priest to be killed in the Philippines, Asia’s largest Catholic country, in three months.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines reacted in a statement of its own to Nilo’s killing, calling it an “outrageously evil act.”

“We pray for the eternal repose of the soul of Fr. Nilo. We also offer our prayer for his bereaved family. We make our appeal once again to the police authorities to act swiftly in the investigation and to go after the perpetrators of this heinous crime and bring them to justice.”

Villegas, meanwhile, pleaded for God to “touch the heart” of President Rodrigo Duterte and stop the “verbal persecution” of the Catholic Church.